Fare Game
Fare Game is the fifteenth episode in season two of . Synopsis A man is found shot dead in a cemetery, but there is no bullet except for pieces of paper left in the wound. A dead woman is found blind folded and with her hands bound behind her back on her bed. As investigation is underway, it is found that the woman sued multiple restaurants. Plot A young man, Kyle Vance, stands by the grave of Samuel Cooper whose video message plays on his tombstone, but rather than paying his respects, Kyle drops dead, his shirt covered in blood. When Mac and Stella arrive at the scene the next day, Mac determines Kyle died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. He recognizes Kyle as an assistant district attorney. Kyle's body was found by Jennifer Cooper, Stanley's granddaughter, but she doesn't recognize Kyle. Across town, Detective Maka leads Danny and Dr. Hawkes to the bedroom of Kathleen Dunley, who was found dead, naked and tied up in her bed. Hawkes finds semen on the sheets, and Danny notices a note and flowers from someone named Michel. Danny also spots blood in Kathleen's ear and some odd spotting and bruising in and around her mouth. Puzzled, the CSIs create a humidifier chamber around the body to reveal prints, indicating the killer had something on his hands when he touched her. Dr. Hammerback confirms that Kyle was killed by a single gunshot wound, but there's no bullet in his chest, and no exit wound. He retrieves some paper from the wound, which he gives to Stella. Stella takes prints off a bit of a balloon found near Kyle while lab tech Adam Ross dusts for prints on Kyle's briefcase. The prints come up positive for one William Tucker, a man with a lengthy rap sheet whom Kyle was building a case against. Detective Flack is familiar with the man and brings him in. Mac has found evidence that Tucker broke into Kyle's apartment--Tucker's blood on the windowsill--but Tucker adamently denies killing Kyle, though he expresses no remorse over the man's death. Stella has learned the paper from Kyle's wound was coated with fast burn powder--it was a blank, meaning the murder may have been accidental. Lindsay has some interesting news--an examination of an office Kyle was renting reveals he was posting as a casting director, a travel agent and a wedding planner. Lindsay discovered another popped balloon at the office, as well as several pictures of people. Many of them have red Xs through them, but one does not: a picture of Jennifer Cooper. Hammerback tells Danny and Hawkes that Kathleen died of asphxiation and had a full stomach when she died. There were eggs of some kind in her eardrum, which Hawkes takes to incubate. Maka has located Michel Hetu--he's a restaurant owner Kathleen was suing. When Michel is brought in for questioning, he tells the CSIs he wanted to sleep with Kathleen and get her to drop the lawsuit, but denies killing her. When the CSIs get the results of her stomach contents, which include water bugs and duck fetus, Danny immediately thinks of an exotic cuisine special at the Grandview Regent Hotel. Danny and Hawkes pay a visit to Tony Collins, the head chef at the hotel's restaurant, and he tells the CSIs about the $10,000 a plate dinner, even offering them a Peruvian centipede, which Hawkes passes on but Danny gamely eats. Collins recalls Kathleen as being at the dinner the night before with a date, a large middle-aged man. Danny notices a tank of small octopi, which Tony tells them must be eaten properly or else they can be fatal, choking the victim on the way down. Danny and Hawkes take on of the octopi back to the lab and examine it, determining that it is a match to the marks in Kathleen's mouth. Someone fed her the octopus and watched her die. Detective Flack has caught up with Jennifer Cooper, but when she sees him she runs, forcing him to give chase. Several other officers intervene, and when Jennifer draws a weapon, they fire at her, only to discover her weapon is actually a squirt gun. Jennifer has been participating in 'Water Gun Wars,' where contestants compete against others in the city for a $100,000 grand prize. The goal is to 'kill' ones targets with a water gun or water balloon before being 'killed' by another contestant. The contest is run by an anonymous 'Supreme Commander,' and no one knows his identity, or how to get a list of contestants in the game. Kyle was playing the game, and Jennifer was his target. Lindsay theorizes that booby traps around his apartment were in place to keep out other players, while Kyle himself set up the fake office to lure other contestants to their 'deaths.' Mac realizes they have to find the person who had Kyle as a target to locate the killer, so the CSIs begin to track down the players of the game. Flack hits the jackpot with videogame aficionado Jordan Stokes, who had Kyle as a target. But Stokes denies killing the man, and DNA evidence backs him up. Mac turns back to Kyle's photos and finds one for a man named Chris Matthews--it's a professional head shot, indicating the man is a real actor. Danny and Hawkes have tracked down Truman Bosch, Kathleen's date for the evening she died--as well as her attorney. Truman and Kathleen were planning to sue Tony, but Kathleen took a shine to him and began flirting with him. Danny wonders if Truman was upset at losing his fee if Kathleen didn't sue, but Truman knows they have nothing on him and leaves. Hawkes' eggs have finally hatched revealing--Peruvian centipedes. The CSIs are puzzled--the centipedes weren't even on the menu the night Kathleen died. Maka has the key--Kathleen sued a man named Larry Whitford five years ago and he lost his restaurant. They are puzzled at the connection until Maka tells them Larry is none other than Tony Collins, going under a new name at a new location. The CSIs go back to the Grandview to arrest Tony, who recognized Kathleen from a picture in the newspaper and plotted revenge. He showed up at her apartment after seeing her at the hotel and had sex with her and then started to feed her some of the items from his menu, including the fatal octopus. He held her down while she choked to death and retrieved the octopus. Mac tracks Chris Matthews down at an audition for "Of Mice and Men," going over lines with his young daughter. He and Stella bring the man in, and he confesses that he didn't mean to kill Kyle. Kyle led him on and made him believe he was actually going on an audition before 'killing' him and eliminating him from the game. Angry that his hopes for an audition were crushed, Chris tracked Kyle down and intended to just scare him with the blank gun he owned, but he fired it too close to Kyle and ran when he saw the damage he'd done. Both cases closed, Danny has a treat for the team: several takeout items from the exotic cuisine menu, including breaded tarantulas, mealworms and crickets. While the rest of the team demurs, Lindsay gamely digs in. Mac, Stella, Flack and Hawkes head to Mac's office for pizza, leaving Danny and Lindsay to enjoy the bug feast. Cast Main Cast * Gary Sinise as Mac Taylor * Melina Kanakaredes as Stella Bonasera * Carmine Giovinazzo as Danny Messer * Anna Belknap as Lindsay Monroe * Hill Harper as Sheldon Hawkes * Eddie Cahill as Don Flack Guest Cast * Robert Joy as Dr. Sid Hammerback * AJ Buckley as Adam Ross * Kelly Hu as Det. Kaile Maka * Wayne Knight as Truman Bosch * Kevin Rahm as Larry Whitford / Tony Collins * Tim Guinee as Chris Matthews * Sprague Grayden as Jennifer Cooper * Benny Nieves as William Tucker * Kyle Davis as Jordan Stokes * William Abadie as Michel Hetu * Sammi Hanratty as Emma Matthews * Adam Huss as Kyle Vance * Paula Trickey as Kathleen Dunley * Rance Howard as Samuel Cooper See Also 215 Category:CSI: New York Season 2